I was originally going to write a post responding to the Federal Governments response to the Gov2au Taskforce final report and how it relates to Local Government. However I think one of the recommendations deserves its own post.

Well time does fly when you're having fun doesn't it. Tomorrow will see the start of the second "We Believe in Community" Conference, organised by that dynamic duo - Reem Abdelaty and Diana Mounter.

This years programme is as impressive as last years, with keynotes by Senator Kate Lundy (of publicsphere fame) and Mark Pesce (you've seen him on New Inventors and Twitter now see him in person). I'll be there recording the presentations for prosterity and tweeting as much as I can.

I haven't written much lately (work keeps getting in the way, shocking I know). However I thought I would put down some thoughts on the Gov2.0 Task Force that the government announced at the last Publicsphere event. Particularly how it relates to Local Government.

Last night I posted my immediate thoughts about the Public Sphere event. However in my exhausted state I managed to miss the big announcement of the day - the launch of the governments Gov2.0 Taskforce.

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and new Minister of State (read Minister without portfolio) Ludwig announced the creation of a 15 member Taskforce with the following Terms of Reference:

The Government 2.0 Taskforce (‘Taskforce’) will advise and assist the Government to:

I promised I would blog about my Public Sphere experience tonight and I'll do my best. However brain is a tad fried so be gentle.

Woke up this morning at 5 o'clock. Had organised a lift down and back with James Dellow (also known as chieftech on twitter). He turned up about quarter to six and we headed off into the fog. Turns out that I haven't lost the knack for falling asleep during long car trips.

I did a presentation last night on the work I've been doing with Plone and Local Government and I was asked about a term I used - OOOG.

OOOG stands for Open source, Open standards, Open Government.

It's a personal standard that I use when judging the suitability of a project or solution for use with Gov2.0/LocGov2.0 work.

When I look at a project or solution I measure how it stacks up against the following criteria:

Open Source:

This is the exact reason why many people don't trust web2.0 and by extension, Gov2.0 and LocGov2.0.

http://www.raena.net/social-marketing-bullshit-bingo/

This brilliant little piece has been put together to demonstrate that the old buzzword bingo game is alive and well, it just has a new, hipper set of clothes.

I like Twitter, I think it, and other micro-blogging services have a lot to offer to the Local Government sector and could form a foundational plank of the whole LocGov2.0 sector.

However, Twitter in Australia has a problem. It's not about the lack of Social Media policies in Local Government, it's not even about Name Squatters, it's about lack of access.

Right now I'm putting together a proposal for an annual or bi-annual report into the takeup and attitudes towards LocGov2.0 in Australia.

The takeup of Gov2.0 technologies and practices amongst the Australian Local Government Sector has been spotty and limited.  While there has been a movement towards automating form submissions, very few Councils are taking advantage of the other technologies and services to assist them in developing new ways of serving their consituents.

There has been an interesting discussion on the gov20canberra list this morning about Open Source and Government, and how to encourage more adoption of Free and Open Source Technologies. I came up with a quick list of steps and I thought I would put them up here.